Flower Town is the Most Disappointing of the StreetPass Games

A few weeks ago, a rabbit popped his head out of a hole in my Mii Plaza and sold me some streetpass games. In an overly convoluted process, I became the owner of four different games that can only be used to their full effectiveness with a StreetPass. In the coming days, we’ll be going through all four games to find out which are worth your attention.

Most of the StreetPass games are actually pretty fun for the most part, but none are more disappointing than Flower Town. On paper, it seems kind of cool. Collect streetpasses to grow your plants while cross pollinating with others to make new an unique plants. A fun little StreetPass collectathon, right?

Wrong.

More like Mr. Mendel lectureathon. Mr. Mendel is your tutor in this game. He’s supposedly there to teach you everything about the game and if that was the only tick he was graded on then he did a good job. Unfortunately, he is really terrible at shutting up. Every little detail about this surprisingly deep StreetPass game will become knowledge to you every time you make a streetpass.

It’s hard to even find a good picture or Mr. Mendel. He is just that bad.

Just when you think you have learned everything about the game, Mr. Mendel lets you know that there is a whole mall dedicated to plants. It’s filled with stores and quests and all sorts of other nifty do-hickeys that don’t really add anything to the core experience. Instead of a fun and quick cross pollination game, Flower Town does everything wrong for a StreetPass game.

StreetPass games should be quick. Mr. Mendel puts a stop to that. StreetPass games should be relatively mindless. Mr. Mendel tells you there is a whole system of buying and selling plants to make money for who knows what. StreetPass games should be fun. Mr. Mendel’s constant dialogue never stops and keeps the fun from happening at all. The constant yammering even continues after there isn’t anything to discover. He keeps reminding you of redundant garbage so much that you just want to ignore it and keep on planting plants.

The actual “core” game is pretty entertaining. Cross pollinating plants is relaxing when it happens. Shame it’s completely dominated by Mr. Mendel yakking on about this and that. I guess the best way to get an idea about how terrible Mr. Mendel is is by imagining Mr. Resetti from Animal Crossing popping up every single time you want to do anything in a game. That’s about the level of obnoxiousness.

The desperation this Mii exhibit while watering plants is chilling. They must be scared of Mr. Mendel trying to give them a talk.

On the flipside, the graphics in the game are gorgeous. I know it’s not moving very fast and particles aren’t flying everywhere, but what is there is some of the best looking visuals on the 3DS let alone a StreetPass game. It’s a shame there are these weird goofy looking Miis running looking completely out of place.

It’s interesting how the level of depth and hand-holding in a StreetPass game can ultimately ruin the experience. Garden Town isn’t necessarily a bad game, but it is one that doesn’t seem to know what direction it is going in and feels archaic in its interface. From all the other StreetPass games, which are heartily recommended, you might want to skip this one so Mr. Mendel’s constant yammering can go on unheard.